"I think it's a great opportunity to turn what, in essence, could be considered a blight--a rusted-out railroad track--into a positive outdoor use and connection between villages," said Jeff Brady, Glenview's village planner.

Officials will take a big step toward that goal with a meeting after the holidays. The corridor would enable bicyclists to connect to nearby paths because of the line's proximity to downtowns, schools and parks.

Skokie officials are also working on plans to use their town's portion of the old Union Pacific line for an extension of the Chicago Transit Authority's Skokie Swift from Dempster Street north to Golf Road near Old Orchard shopping center.

Northfield Trustee Barbara Moore, a longtime bike advocate, has pushed for cooperation in considering the future of the line.

"It's 9 miles of linear track," said Moore, who is on the Chicago Area Transportation Study's Bicycle and Pedestrian Task Force. "If it's subdivided, it can never be brought together again. It's very important to show where we stand on this."

Moore said she began pushing for a formal group last summer after hearing that Pace had given up on turning the Union Pacific line into a high-speed busway linking Old Orchard and Northbrook Court.

Three miles of track running through downtown Northfield also fueled Moore's involvement.

She wants to avoid the lack of cooperation that resulted in another old rail line through the North Shore, the Skokie Valley line, being divided up.

Part of the Skokie Valley line in Northbrook was turned into a bike trail, but no other towns followed the lead. The section in Northfield is part utility right of way and part townhouse and business development.

"If the villages and communities along this fear something they don't like will happen with it, they'll chop it up and divide it," Moore said.

The Union Pacific line, known as the Skokie Industrial Lead, was built in 1903 and became part of Union Pacific when it merged with Chicago & North Western Transportation Co. in 1995.

It originally went south into Chicago, but that portion of the line has long been abandoned and sold off, mainly as utility right of way.

The remaining 9 miles of track continued to serve a few businesses until two years ago.

The section of track south of Dempster was officially abandoned in September 2002, and the section north of Dempster is not being used. Nearly all tracks crossing roadways have been removed in recent years.

One holdup on the conversion effort is that Union Pacific only owns about 90 percent of the land under the track, which could complicate any turnover or sale, Davis said.

A possible solution is to make use of the federal Rails-to-Trails Act, which was passed in 1986 to help convert rail lines with more than one property owner into bike or recreation trails.

About 12,000 miles of railroad lines have been converted to trails across the country. Illinois has yet to see its first conversion under the act because most of the state's railways have free-and-clear ownership of the land.

George Bellovics, the Grand Illinois Trail coordinator at the Department of Natural Resources, who helps communities with rails-to-trails efforts, said conversions can take a long time.

"There is an old saying that `patience is a virtue and they should be virtuous men' because dealing with railroads takes patience," he said. "They deal with their own time clock, and sometimes it can be at glacial speed."

One Downstate group has worked for five years on a rails-to-trails agreement with a railroad along an old CSX line that runs about 25 miles from Champaign to Danville.

It could take that type of commitment on the North Shore, but it's worth the effort, Bellovics said.

"When you get a 9-mile corridor, especially in a densely populated suburban area where there's a possibility to link to other trails, it could be a very valuable addition," he said. "It's interesting that after all these years there are still pieces of rail lines available for trail use. They're pretty precious."